Procedural Justice, Parole Officers, and Re-Entry Outcomes for Serious and Violent Offenders

• In Event: Issues and Challenges in Reentry

Abstract

Scholars find that procedural justice has a positive impact on individuals’ perceptions of legal processes: citizens are more satisfied with legal decisions when they perceive the legal process as fair and feel they have been treated respectfully. Encouraged by findings that suggest procedural justice can be harnessed to improve offender behavior, we examine whether returning prisoners’ interactions with the parole officer could be a source of procedural justice. We seek to determine if the quality of interaction between parole agents and serious and violent parolees is integral to parolees’ reentry success. Using the adult male sample from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) data, this project examines the impact of parole agent respectfulness, helpfulness and professionalism on factors related to parolees’ re-arrest and re-incarceration, or desistance from crime. Early results suggest these factors play a role in re-incarceration.

Authors

• Sarah Smith, California State University, Chico

• Danielle Wallace, Arizona State University

• Alyssa Chamberlain, Arizona State University